Evangelicals today

This article appeared in the Conference edition of the Church of England Newspaper on 20 September 2003 and is reproduced here with their permission.

By Rt Rev James Jones

The English are a people of the Word which is why even in the face of an audio-visual culture evangelicalism defies the media obituaries of Christianity and continues to grow.

Yet as we grow, we acknowledge the diversity of Anglicanism and value the biblical insights of other traditions.

For a large part of the twentieth century, while evangelicalism had forgotten the 19th century heritage of Wilberforce and Shaftsbury, it was the liberal tradition that upheld the biblical principles of social justice in the Kingdom of God. And in the same period it was the Catholic tradition that saw more clearly than most of us that liturgy is the defining expression of theology and doctrine.

With humility we need, notwithstanding our present differences, to recognise when other traditions have read and acted upon the Scriptures more faithfully than we have.

On the Bible

NEAC4 is not about defining a sect; it is about engaging with a continually reforming church as we respond to the Mission of God in the world. in all of this our primary text and authoritative script is the Bible, however incomprehensible that may be to the outside world.

One of our confidences in the Scriptures is this and it is a reformation principle that you do not need a special caste of people to interpret it. Put it into the vernacular and let the Bible speak. It is my testimony and that of many that reading the scriptures has brought us heart to heart, mind to mind with God. sometimes in a dramatic way, touching our deepest emotions. Through the Spirit we have been changed by the encounter. Not all the time, not often so dramatically but sufficiently to know, with the apostle, here are "the words of eternal life."

On the challenges

My own experiences in Hull and Liverpool, immersed in the realities of urban mission, have informed and transformed my reading of the scriptures. I believe there is an inextricable link between the doctrine of justification by faith and acting justly in God's world. How can a person be reconciled through the Cross to the God of justice and mercy without at the same time being caught up in the dynamic of God's action in the world to do justice and act mercifully.

How does God act in the world? What do the scriptures say? With justice and mercy. What is required of God's people? What do the Scriptures say? To do justice and to love mercy?. Whenever the evangelical tradition has allowed a wedge to be driven between justification by faith and acting justly, between personal salvation and social justice, it has become sub-biblical.

Never has this biblical connection between the personal and the social, the private and public been so timely to affirm. The earth faces challenges the magnitude of which are unique in its history. Previously human actions were but the trifles of flies ranged against the forces of nature. That is all now reversed. Human actions are literally changing the balances within creation.

The Scriptures tell us that the earth is the Lord's and everything in it. The Scriptures tells us that all has come in to being through and for Christ. Never has so much theology hung upon two such small prepositions! The Environment, Biotechnology, Global poverty, International Governance, Human sexuality, the nurture of children are all raising fundamental questions about how we should then live. Into these debates the Bible speaks. As evangelicals we must read the scriptures and distil from its pages moral principles.

The Bible, inspired and with authority, urges us to walk humbly and to approach the world with a sense of moral awe. It is this which seems so lacking in our contemporary world where irreversible decisions are taken without due care and attention to their ethical quality and long-term consequences. We urgently need to recover to our public debates the sense of moral awe which is characterised by four hall marks. First, all our actions spring from and shape our characters. Secondly, all our actions have consequences, individually and socially. Thirdly, all our actions will be judged by future generations. Fourthly, we are all responsible for our actions to the source of our moral intuition.